Chapter 10: Future Imperfect

The time Between Thanksgiving and Christmas break was a quiet time at school. Basketball season had started, but I had no interest in it, except as a spectator. As if in compensation though, the number and intensity of the social aspects of my life seemed to increase a thousand fold. Of course there were more church activities, and the activities this time of year were among those I didn't mind, so I pitched in when asked. Greta, Carrie, Joe and I usually did so as a group, and we were frequently being joined now by Bennie Argus and Sissy Mitchell, who were insisting they weren't dating, but who always managed to show up together at whatever was going on.

The Cold Lake high school kids sort of got it with both barrels, getting asked, and being expected, to pitch in for local activities in both Hermiston and Cold Lake.

Friday, December first found the six of us as a group, along with Brian Nileson and Erik Osterhouse, helping to string lights and tinsel down both sides of main street. We had a man from the utility company who made sure we didn't get in trouble with the power lines, but we were using hooks already mounted on the poles, and they were a good six feet below the power lines themselves. We didn't have one of those cherry picker rigs like I was used to from the end of my first life, all we had were two pickup trucks with tall ladders.

The lights we were stringing were heavy duty, commercial lights designed for outdoor use, and Mr. Bowles, the utility man, would hook each string into power right on the pole from a special outlet that was there for this purpose. His wife was with us, and another married couple, their friends the Fieldings. The ladies were in charge of untangling the strings of lights and tinsel, which were also bigger and heavier duty than what you saw on your tree, and the guys were in charge of testing the lights for dead bulbs. These were the old style light strings where the entire string went dead if one bulb was out, so it was a pain to find the dead bulb. Thank God Main Street was only six blocks long in Cold Lake! Of course, in a larger town, you wouldn't ask for high school kids to volunteer to string lights, I imagine.

We took turns, both on top of the ladders as well as feeding strings from the bottom of the ladders and testing strings alongside the trucks. We had plenty of hot cocoa and hot spiced cider to drink, Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Field had brought popcorn and oatmeal cookies. There were more than enough people doing the various tasks that each of the couples had a few chances to sit in the cab of one of the trucks 'to get warm'.

Greta and I got warm alright! With so many people so close, there was no opportunity to get overheated though, which was probably a good thing.

There was going to be a big church party this weekend where the local nativity scene would be assembled in front of the local Presbyterian church, which was the only church actually on main street, and right across the street from City Hall. It was set up on Presbyterian property, but it was a joint project of all the local churches, including ours. Mom and Dad were big on doing this project every year, and as was the case with a lot of my recent activities, they did theirs as couples too. Along with the Ralstons, the Porters, the Arguses and the Bertrams. Mr. & Mrs. Bertram were friends of theirs, but they had no children, and lived on the other side of town, so I didn't know them as well as the others.

With the parents all planning to be out for a long afternoon and evening of nativity building and socializing, Carrie, Joe, Greta, Bennie and I were planning on spending the time out at the Porter ranch. Joe and Greta's sister Janet was going to chaperone us, which was going to be interesting, since her boyfriend Ross was going to be joining us as well.

The girls had decided to cook us all a big dinner, with a pot roast, boiled potatoes and green beans. There was talk of pie for dessert as well. In the meantime, being teenagers, we were consuming cookies and hot cocoa. With Rose and Lily at the house with us, we weren't going to be creeping off as couples looking for dark corners to spend time in, so we planned to play some board games and maybe some cards.

"Do you guys want to sing Christmas carols?" Rose and Lily asked in their synchronized manner.

The twins, as it turned out, had amazing voices, like two bells, clear and high and pure. They started out doing the Little Drummer Boy, and they impressed us all.

I was surprised to discover that I had a decent voice, lower than I remembered from Christmases in my previous life, and I found I did not have a tin ear, something I knew all too well that I did have in my first life.

All the Porter kids had good voices, and I already knew Carrie could sing. She had always been the best singer in our group, but she was going to have to at least share that title with the entire Porter clan, it would appear. Ross Koslowski, Janet's boyfriend had a nice deep voice, but he had very little confidence in it. He was happy to sing along though, after all, everyone can sing Christmas carols.

"Okay, music corner!" Janet called, and everyone got up and headed back to the far corner of the living room, where there was a small piano and a guitar. Janet picked up the guitar and Joe, showing yet another side to him that I didn't know, sat down at the piano.

We sang and we played until the parents got there, and then we sang a little more. We were sounding pretty good by then, and the twins had taken to improvising above the rest of us just a bit, adding a whole new level of depth to the songs. Mom told me on the ride home that she got chills when we did 'Oh Holy Night', that was how good it was.

I could see the Porter clan becoming a family band, maybe becoming Oregon's answer to the Cowsills or the Osmonds. Of course neither of those family groups had found widespread recognition yet, so I had to explain to Mom and Dad, who at least I could explain it to. I threw in the Jackson Five while I was at it, but I didn't say a word about the unappealing morass of weird that was Michael Jackson's later life.

That discussion led to a longer one once we got home about upcoming events, looking towards what we could use to our advantage, of course.

There was little I remembered about the remainder of 1961 that could be used to our advantage. There was no SuperBowl yet, as the AFL and NFL would not merge until 1970.

The Rose Bowl was a big event each year, and I even knew who won this year. Not because of the teams, or anything special that happened on the field. I remembered it because of the great prank some students from the California Institute of Technology would pull, altering a carefully planned placard display, set up by the Washington cheerleaders, where people in the stands held up placards in a coordinated display to create huge words and pictures. The Cal Tech students stole and re-did the printed instruction sheets, thus altering the displays. The most obvious of which, and the one that truly showed it to be a prank and not just bad planning, had the crowd forming a huge sign with CALTECH displayed on a plain white background. The Huskies beat the Minnesota Golden Gophers 17-7, but they had been the winners the year before and were the favorites again this year. Gambling on the game would be minimally profitable.

The upcoming year didn't contain a lot that I thought useful. I remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis, Marylin Monroe's death and Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a single game, but I didn't remember specific dates.

I did remember, later that night, laying in bed, that the 1962 World's Fair was in Seattle. I made a note to ask Dad if we could go. I didn't remember going my first pass through this life, nor even being asked if I wanted to.

The change from 1961 to 1962 was a subdued one that year. There had been a big car crash the year before and four people had suffered serious injuries. One of them, a sixteen year old boy named Joshua Temple had died. Parents weren't letting their kids out on New Year's Eve this year, and most of them were not celebrating like they had in the past. Greta had dinner with me, and we spent a few hours after dinner kissing and cuddling on the couch, but Mom and Dad dropped her off at the ranch on their way to a small party at the Arguses. Not that it wasn't out of their way, but they didn't care.